The 20 Best Last Lines in Movies

Marylin: "You're not an a**hole, Marc. You're just trying so hard to be."

Man, has there ever been a more stinging, pathos-ridden jab at the Millennial Generation than the final scene of Fincher's Facebook story?

2

Annie Hall

United Artists via Everett Collection

Alvy Singer: "I thought of that old joke. This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, uh, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much now how I feel about relationships. They're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd... but I guess we keep goin' through it because, uh, most of us... need the eggs."

The very things that make us miserable are also what make life worth living.

3

Network

MGM via Everett Collection

Narrator: "This was the story of Howard Beale: the first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings."

Leave it to Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky to cap a dark, depressing, nihilistic story about commercial imperialism with a snappy punchline.

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4

Before Sunset

Warner Bros. Pictures via Everett Collection

Celine: "Baby, you're gonna miss that plane." Jesse: "I know."

So much affection, so much desire reverberates through Hawke's final utterance.

5

Clue

Paramount Pictures via Everett Collection

Mr. Green: "I’m gonna go home and sleep with my wife."

With the knowledge that the homosexual Mr. Green (or whatever his real name might be) is smarter, craftier, and leagues more moral than anyone else in the movie, his valediction is akin to a wink at the audience for pulling one over on everybody in the flick.

Even though it caps the most ridiculous movie ever made, the exchange between an underdog hero and the washed-up drunk newly rescued from his own depression is sincerely uplifting.

11

Casablanca

Warner Bros. Pictures via Everett Collection

Rick Blaine: "Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Just 'cause.

12

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Miramax Films via Everett Collection

Chuck Barris: "I came up with a new game show idea recently. It's called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator."

A cold and caustic little diatribe about personal loneliness in a time enveloped by the public eye.

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13

Apocalypse Now

United Artists via Everett Collection

Col. Walter Kurtz: "The horror. The horror."

This one's pretty clear cut.

14

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

Universal Pictures via Everett Collection

E.T.: "I'll be right here."

Nobody lands sentiment like Spielberg. This powerful reassurance that our aliens, pets, friends, parents, and all other loved ones will always live with us in our hearts... well... it was a big deal for some of us.

Is this Brad Pitt talking about the swastika he carved in Hans Landa's forehead, or Quentin Tarantino wryly commenting on the film itself? Either way, we agree.

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16

Good Will Hunting

Miramax Films via Everett Collection

Sean Maguire: "Son of a b**ch… stole my line."

Improvised by Robin Williams, the closer to Good Will Hunting perfectly sums up the fraternal (if sometimes prickly) bond formed between two lost, damaged men seeking answers.

17

The Virgin Suicides

Paramount Classics

Narrator: "So much has been said about the girls over the years, but we have never found an answer. It didn’t matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling — still do not hear us calling them from out of those rooms, where they went to be alone for all time, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."

Are the boys preserving the sisters' memory? Are they manhandling it for their own selfish definitions of innocence? Plenty of room for interpretation in this gem.

18

Trading Places

Paramount Pictures via Everett Collection

Louis: "Looking good, Billy Ray!"Billy Ray: "Feeling good, Louis!"

Pure fun — the ideal way to close out a wacky movie about breaking free from the tyrannical restrictions of 1980s capitalism.

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19

Synecdoche, New York

Sony Pictures via Everett Collection

Caden Cotard: "I know what I want to do with this play now. I have an idea. I think — "Voiceover: "Die."

Essentially, life is tragic and desperate and malicious and ultimately without meaning. Kind of a bummer, Charlie Kaufman.